It’s not like one goes into a film like GOOD LUCK CHUCK with great expectations. And so it is all the more remarkable, dispiriting rather, when even a low bar, a very lowered bar, isn’t met. This flick isn’t just bad, it falls into that rare category of works that are actual harbingers of the… Read More »
THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB
At one point during THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler, one member of the eponymous club watches another burst into tears and run into another room over an Austenian point. “Reading Jane Austen is a minefield” she opines, and so it is. Not because the subject matter of… Read More »
FIERCE PEOPLE
There is little in life sadder to see than a film that thinks it has a great deal to say of a revelatory or profound nature, but doesn’t. And thus is it with FIERCE PEOPLE, which stretches metaphors beyond their inherent tensile strength in order to inform its audience that the rich are different. As… Read More »
THE KINGDOM
THE KINGDOM wants to be SYRIANA by way of BLACK HAWK DOWN, but by earnestly following those templates, it renders itself an unsatisfying pastiche that has neither conviction nor surprise, much less the pervasive sense of uncertainty for which it so desperately strives. Instead, it comes across as schmaltzy, predictable, and insidiously imperialistic. It’s the… Read More »
FEAST OF LOVE
After a promising beginning, FEAST OF LOVE devolves into a sloppy wallow in melodrama of the most turgid variety. It dallies with hyperbole, but refuses to commit to a conceit that might have made it all come together as a satisfying whole. Instead of magic, it is at best contrived. Morgan Freeman is our narrator.… Read More »
HEARTBREAK KID, THE
It takes chutzpah of a particularly flagrant sort to update the Neil Simon/Elaine May classic, THE HEARTBREAK KID. The Farrelly Brothers obviously pack that sort of gumption, taking the droll but deadly humor of the original and rethinking it with their trademark penchant for slapstick and silliness. It may not have the same wry weltschmertz… Read More »
RENDITION
RENDITION takes a subject worth a stark examination and turns it into a long, rambling, and unexpectedly dull tale unredeemed by its good intentions, its twist at the end or Meryl Streep as the prissy and persnickety CIA rendition-meister. It takes a great deal of effort to make that combination fail and this earnest effort… Read More »
THE HOAX
What makes THE HOAX such a thoroughly enjoyable ride is that even though its anti-hero, Clifford Irving, is perpetrating the eponymous hoax, he is so good at it. His exuberance during the highs and even the lows of his scheme as kinks pop up is infectious. He is having such a good time plotting it,… Read More »
30 DAYS OF NIGHT
30 DAYS OF NIGHT, based on the graphic novel of the same name, promises a new vision of the vampire and it delivers. Unfortunately, that new vision is dull, derivative, and more likely to induce a coma than a nightmare. Tired stop-action strobe effects, townsfolk dumber than an ice floe, and vampires more notable for… Read More »
DAN IN REAL LIFE
DAN IN REAL LIFE is suffused with a lovely sweetness. Not cloying, not sappy, but instead, unaffectedly joyful about what life has to offer, including the madness inherent in how very messy life tends to be. Dan (Steve Carell) has been avoiding the joyful part of life. He’s spent four years as a widower, mourning his… Read More »
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